Evil cannot possess you

For several months, whenever I walked past a certain house, I felt a very strong premonition of evil. In fact, the sense of an evil presence was so disturbing that I immediately began praying.

I affirmed the utter supremacy of good, the overmastering potency of divine Love. I knew this is what Christ Jesus' life had signified. I mentally denied that evil could be a presence or power to dispute God. I rebuked the assertion that evil could possess anyone or anything, because I knew God, good, was the possessor of all.

For two months I prayed in this manner whenever I passed the house. Then one night, walking home, I heard a loud crash and saw some young boys running away from the house. A young woman came out yelling in anger. Apparently the boys had been terrorizing her for a week and had just thrown a brick against her house.

It was the last straw for the woman. She poured out a heartbreaking tale of woe. For over a year, freak accidents and tragedies had plagued her household. As she recounted all the strange and terrible things that had been happening, one would have thought a horror story was being read. She felt her life was possessed by a terrible evil.

I felt such a strong sense of the injustice of the situation that I couldn't help speaking of the power of God's love. "You don't have to put up with this evil," I insisted. "The Bible says, 'Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.' n1 It's your divine rightm to be free of evil! It's God's law."

n1 James 4:7

The love of God just poured and poured into the silence that followed these remarks. It lit up her face and mine, filled the house, and flooded outward unconfined. I could feelm it. I could feel the sense of an evil presence lift. Then we talked of prayer and the power of prayer.

The woman's life was changed by this encounter with the Christ, Truth. No longer is there a foreboding sense of evil. The vandalism stopped immediately, too. The recreative power of the Christ had, in a measure, made all things new. This is Love's nature.

"Resist evil -- error of every sort -- and it will flee from you," writes Christian Science's Discoverer and Founder, Mary Baker Eddy. She adds, "We can, and ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves in every direction of the supremacy of Truth over error, Life over death, and good over evil, and this growth will go on until we arrive at the fulness of God's idea, and no more fear that we shall be sick and die." n3

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 406.

Demonic possession is the aggressive assertion of a lie -- the lie that man can be possessed by evil. It is a symptom of the belief that evil is an actual entity that can overpower and enslave a person, taking away his reason and conscience. Whether called evil spirits, the devil, psychosis, or insanity, this lie has no legitimacy, no authority, and no basis in the reality of the Christ.

Christ Jesus brought to light the integrity and inviolate sanctity of God-given individual consciousness. In the reality Jesus lived, man's mentality and life were not vulnerable to evil's assaults and takeovers. Individual consciousness and action were the very reflection of God, the one divine Mind.

The demoniac of the Gadarenes was saved by the regenerative power of the Christ, Truth. Exposed as illegitimate by the love of God reflected in Jesus, the lie of evil mentality, which called itself Legion, was self-destroyed. n2 Evil can find no safe hiding place in the presence of the spiritual understanding of its nonexistence in God's wholly good creation. Evil is a mental imposition,m not a reality. It can only seemm to have authority and life as long as we believe it and disregard man's freedom from evil, which Jesus illustrated as the reality.

n2 See Mark 5:1-15

And because reality does not change, the Christ-power that comes from understanding the true nature of reality is ever available.

Evil cannot possess us. Before the world was, God claimed us as His own.We are His, and no one or no thing can separate us from His love, the love and protection we find in Christ. DAILY BIBLE VERSE The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. Zechariah 3: 2